I just discovered something interesting during Token2049 in Singapore. Bryan Johnson, the founder of Braintree who sold his company to PayPal for $800 million in 2013, was there and made a rather fascinating observation about his parallel life he could have had.

This guy made $300 million from selling Braintree and today his net worth is estimated around $400 million. It might already seem like a huge victory, but according to himself, if he hadn’t sold Braintree back then, he probably would have dedicated his entire life to cryptocurrencies. Imagine a bit what Bryan Johnson’s net worth would be if he had taken that path.

What struck me is that Johnson and his team were already working on a partnership with Coinbase in 2013 to enable merchants to accept Bitcoin. They were among the first in the industry to move in that direction. “I was very optimistic about cryptocurrencies,” he said. “And then we sold shortly after. But yes, there’s a parallel reality where my entire life is crypto.”

Now Johnson is more famous for his obsession with anti-aging and his Blueprint project. He spends a couple of million dollars each year to keep his body in optimal condition, with a team of about 30 people including nutritionists and specialists. His wealth allows him to invest heavily in this, but he says the real benefits come from simple things: precise diet, regular exercise, and quality sleep.

But here’s the interesting link to the crypto world. Johnson was in Singapore to help launch The Network School with Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase. It’s a three-month program for 150 libertarians focused on technology, held in Malaysia on an artificial island. The idea is to create a network state, a vision Srinivasan has been promoting for years, based on libertarian values and a financial system built on Bitcoin.

What fascinates me is how Bryan Johnson’s wealth and philosophy intertwine with crypto thinking. He noticed that Bitcoin rejects inflation, just as he rejects aging. Both are refusals to accept a “slow death” imposed by the system. On the stage of the Network State, Johnson and Srinivasan developed this parallel: Bitcoin prevents the state from slowly draining your wealth through inflation, while Don’t Die prevents the state from slowly draining your health through acceptance of aging.

Johnson isn’t afraid of death, but he wants to stay around long enough to see how artificial intelligence will transform society. He says what he does isn’t just about personal health, but answering a bigger question: what do we do as a species when we give birth to superintelligence?

What’s most surprising is how Bryan Johnson’s wealth allows him to fund these longevity experiments and cultivate these visionary projects. He has been taking 1,500 mg of metformin daily for four years, speaks highly of Ozempic, and sells online a series of supplements called Blueprint Stack. He says his aging speed is now 0.64, meaning he celebrates his birthday roughly every 19 months.

Some observers have compared the Don’t Die movement to a religion, and Johnson, a former Mormon who lost faith, didn’t completely deny the idea. He responded by saying that Don’t Die questions everything we understand about existence, while being intuitively correct.

This story tells me that Bryan Johnson’s wealth isn’t just about money, but about how to use riches to explore the boundaries of what’s possible. Whether it’s longevity, technological innovation, or libertarian philosophy, Johnson is building something bigger than himself.